David Stewart wrote:

>Mikael Rasmusson wrote:
>
>>Liszt said something like "B.  is a great composer, but he's lacking
>>Schumann's spontaneity."
>>
>>As I said before, I don't think B:s musical material is so well suited for
>>the development he subjects it to.  He's lacking Beethoven's dramatical
>>impact.  And sometimes I just find his musical material boring (middle
>>sections of 2nd and 3rd movements of the Double concerto).
>
>With regards to the orchestration being deficient, would you care to
>justify this? If you are saying that Brahms' orchestration is boring, you
>are incorrect.  If you are saying it is unimaginative, you are incorrect.

Hear, hear.  The only work I can think of where the orchestration (and
the piano writing, for that matter) doesn't always seem to work is the 1st
piano concerto.  Incidentally, Rachmaninoff, whom I otherwise admire very
much as an interpreter, disliked the concerto so much on these counts that
he strongly berated Vladimir Horowitz for playing it.  By contrast, he is
supposed to have particularly liked Grieg's concerto.  De gustibus non est
disputandum - but it is nevertheless strange that a master like R should
reject the work for these technical reasons.  If he did not like the
orchestration, he could have rewritten it, and great virtuosi can show up
the beauty in writing that is otherwise thought deficient.  Beethoven's
late piano writing, which many people think excentric and ungainly, becomes
highly suggestive and imaginative in the right hands.I think Abram Chasins
said the same thing about hearing Toscanini in Brahms - he was amazed at
how colourful and transparent it was.

>It seems that you either get Brahms or you don't - no halfway house.

I don't agree with that.  I can both criticise the 1st concerto and
see that it is in many ways a great and powerful work.  I tend to agree
with Neville Cardus about Brahms's use of 'mechanical' sequences and
transitions, but this does not make me enjoy the many parts of great wisdom
and eloquence any the less.  Incidentally, I react with similarly mixed
feelings - great parts interspersed among interminable bridge passages and
sequences - to much of Wagner's music, who is so often considered Brahms's
antipode.

What gave you the 'revelation'? Was it a particular performance? If
Brahms'or Wagner's transitions and developments sound mechanical rather
than organic, it may largely be due to the kinds of treatment they are
commonly subjected to.  Much Brahms is played too slowly and stodgily.  And
Wagner by Furtwaengler is a completely different experience.  Great artists
can bring unity and life to the most unwieldy hackwork (think of Hofmann in
Rubinstein's 4th piano concerto or Rachmaninoff in his own concertos).

Felix Delbruck
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